As the season for high school graduation winds down, it’s time not only to celebrate the day that you have finished high school but the time to think things over for your future such as when to hunt for a job, when to go to college (if you plan to do so), and even penning a will.
Young adults may associate wills with old, dying, bedridden aristocrats, and that they have a long life ahead of them to write down a will. As such, most 18 year-olds do not have a will. This popular misconception among most young adults is probably the youth’s defense mechanism to avoid the subject altogether, but no matter how hard they try, the cold, hard fact of the inevitability of death and how it could happen to anyone, anywhere, anytime, including themselves cannot be utterly cast aside.
The anxiety of death anytime can be an added pressure to the graduates who are about to enter college this coming fall. They can help alleviate this anxiety by entering into a legal contract and drawing up a will as soon as they turn 18.
It is a way for young people to ruminate upon how they can protect their future when they will get married and have their children and how they may let their heirs inherit their property smoothly. Some teens might scoff off the idea as absurdly advanced, especially as they will have student loans to shoulder soon. Others would say they have no property, to begin within the first place.
Despite how meager they think their assets are, a will would still be of great help in facilitating its transfer to those who the young adult may leave behind. For young adults from more well-to-do families, a will may be more immediately practical. They may have monetary or business inheritance, estate, or belongings of grandparents left to them. If the young person wants specific persons to inherit these possessions without interference from the court, then having a will would be useful.
Regardless of how big or small a person’s assets, and liabilities are, it is the law of the state and the courts which would determine how these will be distributed if a person dies without leaving a will. [1] The long delays for heirs as well as wrangling for inheritance will put an added stress on the family and friends grieving for the young person who died.
It is also a sentimental question. Suppose that your teen owned a beloved pet, rare comic book collection, or even a piece of beachfront property where she played and grew up. When something happens to her, what will happen to these possessions? Without a will, the state can take them all, especially if these possessions of sentimental value are of great importance to the state, such as a piece of land or rare cultural artifacts.
When a young adult is placed into early parenthood arising from an unplanned pregnancy, drafting a will also becomes immediately compelling. The surge of hormones everywhere may make your child into a young parent one day. If your teen, who would happen to become a single, unwed parent of your grandchild, dies, who will be the baby’s guardian? Custody of children is a matter of will that can be stated by your teen while he or she is still alive.
For every period that a young adult thinks that his or her assets and properties have grown, he or she can update their will. They can make living wills so that when they meet unfortunate accidents that would render them unconscious or unable to communicate, their express wishes would still be carried out.
What’s important is to make a will now than leaving every single day with no will for every tomorrow that death may come. Take advantage of your teen’s excitement to grab any opportunity that they think would make them adults by having them make their will.
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